The world of doublespeak

It is often mistakenly thought that George Orwell invented the term ‘doublespeak’ in his dystopian novel 1984 — but he did not. Orwell created ‘newspeak’ and taken as a package, these portmanteau words describe saying one thing while meaning another, and Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah has just delivered a master class in arcane communication. He says that legal action against militant groups that he named as Jamaatud Dawa and Jaish-e-Mhammad (JeM) was not possible because the “state itself is involved”. He was speaking to BBC Urdu, and when asked why no action had been taken against these proscribed groups, he said that because they were proscribed they could no longer carry out any activity in the province. He did not detail in what way the state was involved with either organisation in such a way as to make legal action against them impossible. He went on to refute the allegation that Punjab and particularly south Punjab had been spared operations against extremist groups and that in fact many thousands of people had been arrested and prosecuted and that was the reason why the province had a comparatively good law-and-order profile. Further denials came regarding south Punjab as a locus for extremism.



On the one hand, Mr Sanaullah was saying that the state in some indefinable way had a finger in the pie of two large, powerful and very wealthy banned organisations that continue to operate openly, and on the other that there was no problem — the ‘no problem’ that necessitates an operation which is ongoing and according to the law minister may take several years to complete. Logic and coherence have by this time disappeared from the ministerial map; and we are left yet again with a senior representative of the government speaking on the record with a global news organisation and making a web of contradictory statements. The government is said to have been hand in glove with two extremist groups and a reality is robustly denied — namely that extremist groups are not a problem in south Punjab. We recommend urgent training for all ministers on the fundamentals of communication. And newspeak.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 20^th, 2016.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.